Facebook Is Changing Its News Feed Design, But Relax, It’s Awesome

It won’t satisfy everyone, but Facebook’s News Feed is getting a revamp. Unlike the company’s previous big announcement about Graph Search, a feature that still hasn’t shown its usefulness yet, this new feed looks amazing. Influenced by the work they’ve put into their mobile apps, something they’ve been lagging behind on for many years, they’re bringing in a new way of looking at things from your friends and otherwise that’s got bigger pictures, is far more direct, and is a lot more useful. Let’s break down the changes.

Everything is bigger. All those pictures are bigger, all those friend notifications are bigger, all those stories are bigger. During their presentation, they showed off earlier versions of the News Feed in which most of the updates were mere lines of text. If I like something a new company, restaurant, or make a new friend, you’re going to see their cover photo and a list of friends who have also liked it. If I post an album, you’re going to see huge thumbnails of everything at a glance.

Everything is separate. Over the past few years, News Feed has done a pretty impressive job of curating content, but it was at the cost of cutting out a lot of it. Now, you’ll be able to select a variety of feeds, whether it’s Friends, Photos, or even the things you Like, and see every update, which is fantastic for even a small site like ours to get more exposure.

Everything is mobile-ish. Again, inspired by their mobile and tablet apps, Facebook is embedded all those little app notifications and subcategories into a thin strip on the side of the page. On top of that, because 35% of desktop Facebook users didn’t have screens of a high enough resolution, they never saw the chat interface. Now they will because of the site’s new responsive, resolution-independent design.